An Alaskan journalist's perspective on local and national issues

Posts tagged ‘2012 Election’

Well, this post has been a long time coming. Even given our opinion on politics at the moment, it is worth checking into where things stand right now. This election year is an interesting one. There are a lot of reasons why.

The first is that there are several truths that need to be analyzed when looking at the election. The first is that the state of the American public right now is in shambles. The middle class is rapidly disappearing, for a number of reasons. The first is that the wages of this country have remained stagnant, while the cost of living in America has skyrocketed. The next is that more and more students are walking away from college now with debt so high that they can’t realistically hope to get rid of it for the rest of their lives. These debts are anchors around the people’s neck. It is a bubble that is going to burst, because students can’t afford it, and eventually, they will just default out of these, the same way that the housing bubble burst because of default on sub-prime mortgages.

Then there is the job market. It isn’t going anywhere. The latest report that came out showed that the economy is going nowhere. It is stagnated, and because the 99% of Americans are too afraid to invest and are holding tight to their money, businesses that aren’t massive corporations aren’t investing or are falling under, and the banks refuse to pay up, the government is passing legislation to cram massive amounts of money into the gaping hole that is our economy, never realizing that they are just putting off the inevitable. And across the Atlantic, the EU is falling apart, barely being held together. Because all the governments of the 1st world are owned by banks, the governments are being instructed to do nothing, and to not pass legislation that could get us out of the ditch.

Put simply, things are really, really bad for Americans right now.

So, with that in mind, what is the outlook for the 2012 election? Who is going to win? Well, to answer that, let’s look at the strategy of the presidential candidates thus far.

Mitt Romney has pretty much been doing what Republican candidates have been doing for the last 20 years. Ever since Ronald Reagan, they are appealing to past glory. Saying that we used to be so mighty, and we are going to be mighty again. Basically, the argument is “Manifest Destiny.” A cheap, overused argument that is so tired and worthless that people just don’t care about hearing it anymore.

Another problem is that Romney is basically using the same talking points as George W. Bush Jr. And most of the American public blames the absolutely insane amounts of spending and the absolutely insane foreign policy that enabled that spending for this mess. The economy nose-dived under Bush, and since Romney isn’t offering anything new, the people care about his message about the same.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, is doing just about the same thing, but with different language. He has been appealing to the way things used to be, saying that with a little work, he can get things back on track for the way we were as a nation.

Here’s the problem with that strategy – people aren’t buying it. People didn’t buy it when he said that “America is back,” and they aren’t buying that the good times are just around the corner. There are Gallup polls showing that people think that the country is heading in the wrong direction. The thing about it is – financially, they’re right. He is now saying that hope and change is still the way out, but people aren’t buying that line either.

The public has lost faith. Hopelessness and despair are setting in. Obama blames the Republicans. Republicans blame Obama. The rest of us blame all of them and their pathetic adherence to Wall Street’s every whim.

As for a strategy for the election, the fact is that Obama is coasting on the weak change he’s gotten done, along with the Health Care Reform Act, one of the greatest cons in American history that the liberals are championing (read Matt Taibbi’s book, Griftopia, it is shows how obscene this new act is, along with how it is a complete sellout to the private insurance companies who have a stranglehold in medical care in this country).

Romney, in the meantime, has nothing. He can’t run on immigration. He can’t use Health Care Reform against Obama because he passed even more liberal (for how unbelievably conservative Obama’s Act is) legislation that actually included a public option (which is the only way this birthday present to the private insurance companies could have been worth something). He can’t go against Obama on the economy because it will just be another back-and-forth blaming game between the two of them.

So, what will the election be about? The same thing that all elections are about now – who America likes more. That’s what elections are about now. To Hell with what matters. To Hell with political ideas. It has simply become a popularity contest.

And that is why the American people can rest easy tonight. Because the real truth is – it doesn’t matter. No matter who you elect, this government will still be Wall Street’s slaves. The military-industrial complex will still be fed with an endless supply of taxpayer dollars. Nothing will change. Not one damn thing. So rest easy. You are going to be screwed.

With the 2012 Presidential elections just around the corner, it has been fascinating to sit back and watch the liberal and conservative voices, both in the media and in person, talk. I have been content not to join the choir, because honestly, this was all too interesting. The conservative line is boring. There is the endless schtick about Obama and the liberals. You just learn to ignore that after a while. Their war on women’s rights is far more pressing.

However, the real voice to pay attention to is the liberal perspective. Truly, the left has been the far more engaging of political debates. Now, just to get something clear, I am a far-left political idealist, more in line with socialism than liberal or progressive ways of thinking. I, however, am not a supporter of President Obama. Nor am I a supporter of Mitt Romney. I believe voting is useless, because the system is rigged either way.

It seems that a lot of liberals think otherwise. There are three fundamental arguments that I am hearing from the left about President Obama. The first is that he is a good President who tried, but that he was continually obstructed by Republicans, and that is why he failed on so many of his campaign promises, or, well, doing anything substantially productive. They seem to forget that the President not only continued Bush’s foreign policy, but expanded it. He has more or less franchised GITMO, even though he promised that he would close it. He has expanded the powers of the Patriot Act, even going so far as to bring the policy into effect allowing this government to outright call for the murder of a person without trial or charge or anything. Just saying that they are a suspected terrorist, so we should kill them.

The second argument is that they will vote for Obama because the alternative is even worse. Basically, taking the evil that they know over the one that they don’t. They seem to forget that Mitt Romney is not going to win this election. Moderates make up the bulk of this country’s voting population. Either moderate-left or moderate-right, the fact is that 80% of this country’s vote is much more toward the middle, leaning one way on some issues, another way on others. And the fact is that nobody likes Romney. The moderate-right Republicans are just as sick of the insanity in their party as the liberals are, and they want a serious candidate (which they know he isn’t), and the moderate-left has seen the Republican Party’s war on women, and they aren’t going to jump on board. The fact is that Romney was dead on arrival. All of the Republican candidates are. NONE of the Republican majority liked any of them. They were asking the same question that I have been asking for months – where is the sane candidate?

The third argument is one that I find the most interesting – Obama didn’t do so well, but if we give him another chance, he’ll be able to finally deliver. Where did this argument come from? When is the bulk of this country going to realize that NONE of the political parties care about them? Democrat or Republican, there isn’t a single group of politicians in this country on the American people’s side. The only side they are on is the side that keeps them in power. Right now, it’s Wall Street. The reality is that there is no political group who cares what happens to the people of this country. The American people serve only as the catalyst to get them into office. Beyond that, they might as well not exist.

America’s problem goes far deeper than what most liberals seems to want to understand. It’s not the corporations, or the Republicans. It is the people. The American people, and their acceptance of mediocrity, being lied to, and being pawns. The self-indulgent and greedy culture that we surround ourselves with. All of these things are why this country is falling apart. Meanwhile, the 2012 elections are going to serve no purpose other than to show that this country won’t try something different, or won’t step out of the box. Why vote third party when you can be slaves to the two big ones and follow them blindly? Why demand something better when it is just easier to accept?